Why do Baptists believe in the separation of church and state? There has always been a tendency for some believers to confuse their own nation with the kingdom of God. People in the 1980s might have said, ‘Prince Charles has gone to see the Pope, therefore there will be some terrible calamity befall Great Britain’, as though Great Britain is a special country, almost a Christian nation. Some think of the deliverance from the Spanish Armada, and say, ‘God has had his hand upon Great Britain, and therefore she has been delivered from all these things.’ Contrary to Scripture many people have believed in the establishment of the church, as though God and nation are interlinked. But that is not the teaching of Scripture; that is utter confusion.
‘Fear not, little flock’ – the true people of God are always a minority within any nation. There is no such thing as a Christian nation; there never has been, and there never will be. ‘For it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom’ – there is a spiritual kingdom, Zion, the city of our God. First and foremost believers are citizens of God’s kingdom. We are citizens of our country, and we must be good citizens, because the Scripture says so, but it never tells us to confuse our nation with the kingdom of God, which will culminate in the eternal heavenly kingdom. Seek the kingdom of God: that is the call of the Lord to us. We seek to get into it, seeking salvation, and then we seek its good above all else. If you try, as a Christian, to bring about by some political means the moral reformation of the country, religious and political, you will see it crumble before your eyes. The thieves will break in and steal. That is not to say Christian people have no place in politics, no calling in national leadership, but it is not the means God has appointed for the advancement of the kingdom of heaven.
Sometimes great bodies of Christians have striven to get some improvement in the arrangements by which the nation is governed, to preserve Christianity, and to turn it into a Christian nation. They have struggled and struggled, and then it's all been swept away. We are supposed to be building things which will last forever, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not away.’ We believe in the separation of church and state, and we are building the kingdom of God by the power of the Spirit, and we don't need the help of the state or its legislation.
Further on in verse 51 Christ says, ‘Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.’ Christian people will always have enemies. The world will always be against us in some shape or form. You cannot have a Christian nation. Those who are truly born again, wherever they are to be found in the world, are in the heavenly kingdom, and all those outside it are always against them. Why has the world at times been ready to respond to the overtures of the church and to protect the church, and to provide for it and even to pay for it? Only in order to take it over, to water it down, to keep it under control, and to get the church to do the state's bidding and to do its work for it. You cannot mix these two. In any nation there are bound to be vast numbers of unconverted people at all levels of society, and they will generally be the overwhelming majority. At times when a Christian nation has been brought about, it has been a catastrophe for the church of the living God. Remember the Lord Jesus Christ said to Pilate, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’, and how sad it is that some very earnest Christians have struggled all their lives to make it just that. That is why the Crusades, so-called, were absurd, and of course it's only the Roman Catholic mind that would really think of such things.
There is no doubt that if you look at British history, you will see tremendous blessings and privileges and preservations. But those things were not done for Britain; they were not done because Britain was special. Those things were done for Zion. That is what the Lord says in Isaiah, ‘I have given nations for you.’ If God blesses Britain at some point in her history, it is because God will have, according to his electing love, a purpose towards an elect people. It's not for Britain; it's for his people. The nation benefited, yes, but it wasn't for them, it was for Zion.
Does God deal with nations? Yes, but not in a way that we can plot or predict. That is according to his sovereign will. God deals in grace with individuals and with Zion, not with any other unit. He does not deal in grace with a nation. If he does deal in a special manner with a nation, it is on account of the elect people in it. It may be that God will send a calamity or a catastrophe upon a nation for sin and in judgment. Does that mean that whenever any other nation commits the same sins, God will bring the same catastrophe upon them? No, it doesn't. You cannot plot it, because God's token judgments through the history of the world are according to his sovereign will and activity. They do not follow any predictable pattern.
Now when it comes to grace, you can predict things. You can say every time a sinner drops on his knees and in shame and in contrition pours out his heart before God in repentance and believes in the only Saviour, that sinner is saved. That is predictable. But you cannot trace a pattern of operation in his judgments of nations and in his dealings with nations. You can say, at the end of time every sin will be judged, but the judgments that are poured out before the day of judgment are only token judgments according to the inscrutable will of God. In Revelation 8 and the following chapters you read about God's token judgments upon the world. God won't have it that at the end of time there have never been any warnings to the human race. Imagine that life all went very smoothly and every nation under heaven was highly prosperous, and then one day the whole world comes to the Day of Judgment and God pours out his wrath. What will the people say? ‘We never understood anything about this.’ If the world didn't know about these things, you could argue that it would be quite unjust of God to suddenly pour out these judgments upon people.
The Lord on one occasion pointed out the thirteen people who were crushed in Siloam when a tower fell on them. Why did this happen to them? Were they any more wicked than other people? No, said the Lord, it is a warning. Make sure that you behave and that you watch out for your sins. But it doesn't mean to say that everybody who commits the same sins will have a tower fall on them. Token judgments are according to God's secret will.
What is the Old Testament? Among other things it is God taking a sample nation, the Jews, and dealing with them in a special way. God did make the Jews his nation. He even made a national covenant with them. One reason for doing this is that the Jews of old were a mighty demonstration. God was saying, ‘Don't let anybody say in the judgment day, “Lord, if you had revealed yourself to us and demonstrated your power towards us and been a Father to us, then we would have responded, and we would have loved you and served you.” Oh no, you wouldn't. I gave a demonstration of how obdurate human beings are in my relationship with the Jews. I revealed myself to them. I embraced them and led them and blessed them and gave them so much. But look at them through their history. Most of the time they walked far from me; they disregarded me.’ Mark you, it wasn't an experiment on the part of God. He always knew it couldn't be done. It was a demonstration to mankind.
Think of the national church in this country. From the time of the Reformation, the Church of England has had a crowned head of the country as the head of the church. When Elizabeth I was approached with regard to further reforming the church in its government and organizing it according to a more Scriptural pattern, what did she say? No, she wasn't going to have any tampering with the bishops. Those bishops were necessary in her view for the perpetuation of her power and the controlling of her kingdom. What is church discipline in the Church of England? Most of the time it has been carried out by an unregenerate head of the church, who lives a worldly life. What hope for the discipline of the church? You give the impression that Christianity is okay if it's combining gross worldliness with nominal acceptance of religious things. What is the price for accepting the patronage of the state? The destruction of the faith, effectively.
We are the true kingdom of God, and the kingdoms of this world will always be against us. But we shall triumph, and we shall prosper, and we shall do the work of God, and God will keep us. The kingdoms of this world will all pass away. There will be constant changes: God will lift them up; God will put them down. We look to God alone. We are the invincible, the everlasting kingdom, those who God is determined to use and to defend, even in persecution. Should we be imprisoned, will God have forsaken us? Oh no. The protection of God will be upon us to keep the church pure, to keep souls safe in his kingdom, to keep people firm in the doctrines of grace, in even greater communion with their Lord. [Taken from sermon by Peter Masters, 1994.01.02]